French-Algerian dance company combines martial arts, hip hop and modern dance
Compagnie Hervé Koubi will perform “What the Day Owes to the Night” at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Saturday, April 22, 2017. Their trademark aesthetic combines martial arts,break dancing, acrobatics and modern dance. (Photo by Didier Philispart)
By KAITLIN WRIGHT |
kwright@scng.com | Orange County Register
April 15, 2017 at 10:00 am
In 2009, 249 male dancers and one female dancer met in Algiers, Algeria, to audition for an up-and-coming French choreographer Hervé Koubi. The performers who showed up to the casting call were mostly self taught as there are no formal dance schools in Algeria, Koubi said.
“(The dancers) train outside, on beaches, in courtyards, in the street, thanks to videos (on) the internet,” said Koubi in an email interview. “Most of the dancers I met had a good level in dance, especially in hip-hop, break dance and Capoeira.”
Since then, Koubi has taken these street styles and blended them with modern dance and acrobatics to create the company’s trademark aesthetic — one that boasts 15-foot trust falls, b-boy head spins and double back flips.
Athletic prowess aside, Koubi said that the meaning of the work is more important than the spectacle. The tricks and turns just happen to be the vehicle his dancers use to convey the emotions of the piece which, in the case of their performance at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on April 22, explores Koubi’s ancestral past.
“Ce que le joir doit à la nuit” (“What the Day Owes to the Night”) was created by Koubi after he found out that his family was from Algeria, not France like he was led to believe for 25 years.
“One day I asked my father ‘Where do my parents come from? Which part of France?’ And that day my father showed me a picture of an old man dressed in Arabic style,” said Koubi. “My father told me, ‘Here is your great grandfather. He spoke only Arabic and it’s the same for all your great grandparents.’ That was a shock for me. I was not from France, but from Algeria.”
Koubi said he started creating “What the Day Owes to the Night” that day.
Although the project’s title matches a book by Yasmina Khadra about an Algerian boy who is sent to live with his affluent uncle in a colonial town, Koubi was not inspired by this text, nor was he trying to replicate it.
“For this project I wanted to make light in the darkness of my history. I wanted to make day in the night of my past and the only thing I can tell you is that the piece couldn’t have another name,” said Koubi.
Despite disassociating his dance work with this novel, though, Koubi said there are similarities between himself and the main character that he can’t deny — the most unexpected parallel being that both Koubi and the boy in the novel are chemists with an interest in pharmacy.
In fact, Koubi completed his doctorate in pharmacology and clinical biology at the University of Aix-en-Provence before he decided that the appeal for dance was too strong for him to resist.
Koubi jokes that his parents were “not too upset” with his turn from medicine to dance given that he was soon awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 2015.
“I always preferred to have the position of author. I really liked to exchange with the audience, to share my thoughts, and I decided to use the dance medium to express myself,” said Koubi. “Choreography is like an open book for me.”
The upcoming performance of “What the Day Owes to the Night” is an evening-length production set to devotional Sufi music, Bach’s “St. John’s Passion” and a re-orchestration of Algerian composer Hamza El Din’s “Escalay” as performed by the Kronos Quartet.
Regarding his musical selection, Koubi said, “I wanted to build bridges between the European culture I grew in and my roots that are from the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.”
These roots have flourished since Koubi connected with the Algerian dancers, men who he calls his “found brothers.”
Said Koubi: “I had to give life to my orientalist dreams, I had to do it through dance with dancers from Algeria. … I just would like the audience to be moved by what they saw and invite them to share my vision of a global culture, of a brotherhood beyond the frontiers and back.”
‘What the Day Owes to the Night’
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, April 22
Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine
Tickets: $40-$100
Info: thebarclay.org
Kaitlin Wright has been covering arts for the Register since 2013. She writes about professional dance in Orange County as well as high school dance, music, theater and visual arts for the Varsity Arts section. She is also an occasional contributor to OC Home Magazine and regularly assists Coast Magazine, the Press Telegram and the Register with events listings. Kaitlin lived in Albuquerque, Las Vegas and the Antelope Valley before moving to Orange County for college. She holds degrees in dance and literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine.
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